[AUCTeX] AUCTeX 11.86 released

[Ralf Angeli]

Release notes for AUCTeX 11.86 with preview-latex
=================================================

AUCTeX provides by far the most wide-spread and sophisticated
environment for editing LaTeX, TeX, ConTeXt and Texinfo documents with
Emacs or XEmacs.  Combined with packages like RefTeX, flyspell and
others it is pretty much without peer as a comprehensive authoring
solution for a large variety of operating system platforms and TeX
distributions.  It supports document-dependent completion and syntax
highlighting, easily accessible menus, jumping to error locations in
the source file, a number of editing shortcuts, intelligent
indentation and filling of text during entry, and WYSIWYG previews of
graphical elements like math formulas right in the Emacs source
buffer, by virtue of its preview-latex component.

One part of the preview-latex subsystem is the central `preview.sty'
file that is independently useful for a number of applications and is
available in unbundled form from CTAN.[1]

Interfaces and installation procedures in this release remain a moving
target.  If you feel you need to consult third-party installation
instructions for some reason, be sure that they refer to the same
version of AUCTeX as you are installing.  For installing AUCTeX
itself, the installation instructions in the AUCTeX package should be
preferred.

AUCTeX needs volunteers in particular for non-programming tasks:
documentation writing, tutorials, translations, reference material,
sleuth work, testing.


New features and fixed bugs in this release
-------------------------------------------

Parsing of LaTeX output was improved.  It is now less likely that
AUCTeX opens a non-existent file upon calling `TeX-next-error'; a
problem for example encountered when using MiKTeX 2.8.  In addition
quoted file names as emitted by MiKTeX are now supported.

A new framework for the definition and selection of viewers was
implemented.  If you have customizations regarding viewers you will
have to redo them in this new framework or reenable the old one.  See
the section on viewers in the manual for details.

Comprehensive editing support for PSTricks was added.

Support for various LaTeX packages was added, e.g. `tabularx', `CJK',
and `hyperref'.

An easy way to switch between TeX engines (PDFTeX, LuaTeX, XeTeX,
Omega) was added.

Support for SyncTeX was added.  This involves the command line options
for LaTeX and the viewer.

Folding can now be customized to use macro arguments as replacement
text.

`preview.sty' now works with XeTeX.

A lot of smaller and larger bugs have been squashed.


Requirements
------------

It is required that you use at least GNU Emacs 21 or XEmacs 21.4.
XEmacs requires at least version 1.84 of the xemacs-base package
(released on 01/27/2004) or a sumo tarball dated 02/02/2004 or newer
for compiling AUCTeX: please use the XEmacs package system for
upgrading if necessary.

The preview-latex subsystem requires image support.  This is available
with GNU Emacs 21.3 under the X window system.  For Windows[2], Mac OS
X (Carbon, Cocoa)[3] or native GTK+ toolkit support, at least version
22.1 of GNU Emacs is required.  Emacs 22 and later is the recommended
platform for AUCTeX in general.  If you prefer XEmacs, it will work in
version 21.4.10 or later.

You'll also need a working LaTeX installation and Ghostscript.
dvipng[4] (version 1.4 or later), a very fast DVI converter, can be
used to speed up the conversion.

Availability
------------

AUCTeX can be downloaded in various formats from
<URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/auctex/>.  At release time, we provide the
source tarball, a precompiled version for Emacs on Windows, and a
platform-independent XEmacs package file (which you have to install
yourself using XEmacs' own package system, after using it for removing
the previous version of AUCTeX).  The easiest way for using AUCTeX, of
course, is using versions of Emacs that already include AUCTeX or a
software package management system for your operating system which
provides you with the latest release.

The XEmacs package file can be discerned by `pkg' in its name.  It is
usually more recent than what gets distributed from XEmacs servers and
as part of the Sumo tarball.

A separate directory for each release contains some stuff from the
tarball, such as ChangeLog, printable manuals, and a reference sheet.
The download area is mirrored to the directory support/auctex on CTAN.
AUCTeX is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3.

You'll find more information at the web site of AUCTeX
<URL:http://www.gnu.org/software/auctex/>, including its mailing list
addresses.


Future development and additional information
---------------------------------------------

AUCTeX is proceeding as a GNU project with the long-term intent of
merging it into Emacs.  For that reason, all new contributors need to
assign copyright to their contributions to the FSF (the usual
procedure for Emacs contributors).  The same holds for past
contributors.  The principal authors and maintainers have already done
so, but it would require a diligent and diplomatic volunteer to find
and ask the rest.

Current project manager is David Kastrup.  Paypal contributions to
<URL:mailto:address@hidden> would be appreciated in order to
compensate for time, money and hardware required for presenting AUCTeX
at conferences.  Extensions may be commissioned: enquire on the
developer list (see above).  Other than that, volunteering for tasks
remains the most effective way of helping AUCTeX development.

The following people contributed to this release series (in
alphabetical order): Ralf Angeli, Masayuki Ataka, Thomas Baumann,
Berend de Boer, Joshua Buhl, Miguel Frasson, Peter S. Galbraith,
Patrick Gundlach, Yvon Hevel, Arne Jørgensen, David Kastrup, Ikumi
Keita, Frank Küster, Jan-Åke Larsson, Dan Nicolaescu, Piet van
Oostrum, Davide G. M. Salvetti, Holger Sparr, Mike Sperber, Reiner
Steib, Christian Schlauer, Shiro Takeda, Mark Trettin (Please accept
our apologies if we forgot somebody.)

Footnotes: 

[1]  <URL:ftp://ftp.dante.de/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/preview/>

[2]  You can get a precompiled version of Emacs for Windows at
<URL:ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/emacs/windows/>.

[3]  See e.g. <URL:http://www.emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/EmacsForMacOS>
for a list of precompiled versions of Emacs for Mac OS X.

[4]  dvipng is available via its project page
<URL:http://savannah.nongnu.org/projects/dvipng> and from CTAN.

-- 
Ralf Angeli, for the AUCTeX team